Several of the most popular internet service providers are stepping over themselves to tell customers that, no, they aren’t going to sell your browsing history.
Following Congress’s repealing of internet privacy rules, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have all posted blogs reassuring customers that they won’t sell private information. [Read me here...]

Just days after Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S8’s new facial-scanning feature, someone has already successfully spoofed it. Bloggers at Marcianophone secured a S8 with their face and then tricked the phone with a selfie that was saved on another device. The S8 eventually unlocked, though it took a few seconds. Either way, you might not want to use face scanning as your primary form of phone security. Samsung has already noted that facial scanning isn’t the most secure form of authentication. Using your fingerprint, iris, or a PIN is preferable. With that in mind, it’s possible that Samsung is still working on the feature. The phones at its New York City event weren’t final products, so the company could theoretically tighten up security before shipping to the public. [Read more here...]

Pornhub, one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world according to Google, has added support for encryption, reports VentureBeat. The popular adult entertainment website will now default to HTTPS to give its users a little more confidentiality when visiting the site. Its sister website, YouPorn, will get the same treatment on April 4th. The announcement comes just days after Congress successfully voted to reverse an FCC privacy rule that will soon allow internet service providers to buy consumers’ web browsing data (the resolution just needs President Trump’s signature to become final. If you want to know which goobers members of Congress made that possible, here’s a full list.) While HTTPS won’t prevent ISPs from tracking what websites you’ve visited, it does prevent them from seeing what specific section of the website you looked at. In Pornhub’s case, ISPs will still know if you were on Pornhub, but it won’t know what kinds of videos you were watching. [Read more here...]

Earlier this week, Congress voted to repeal privacy measures that would stop internet service providers from sharing their users’ internet activity with third parties. Those rules were passed in October, but not only does this vote undo them, it prevents the FCC from reinstating similar rules in the future. This is great for broadband companies, but if you’re one of these companies’ users, what are you supposed to do? One popular recommendation you might have heard is to use a virtual private network, or VPN. You can find a lot of comprehensive online explanations of what VPNs are, but in the simplest terms, they create a secure, encrypted connection between your computer (or phone, tablet, &c.) and a private server somewhere else, preventing anyone else from seeing or modifying that traffic. When you browse the internet, data goes to the server, which passes it securely back to you. When you send data out, it appears to come from the server, not your computer. While it doesn’t mak…

Republicans in Congress just voted to reverse a landmark FCC privacy rule that opens the door for ISPs to sell customer data. Lawmakers provided no credible reason for this being in the interest of Americans, except for vague platitudes about “consumer choice” and “free markets,” as if consumers at the mercy of their local internet monopoly are craving to have their web history quietly sold to marketers and any other third party willing to pay. The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress. [Read more here...]

Apple is currently in the process of rolling out iOS 10.3, with the biggest new feature reserved for AirPods owners. You can now track the location of Apple’s wireless earbuds in the Find My iPhone app, either by playing a sound from one or both misplaced AirPods, or seeing the location where the earbuds were last connected to your iOS device over Bluetooth. [Read more here...]

Apple’s iOS 10.3 is rolling out today, with a new find my AirPods option and CarPlay improvements. Most of the features in iOS 10.3 aren’t major, but Apple is actually undertaking a pretty huge shift for all iPad and iPhone users today. Within iOS 10.3, Apple is moving supported devices to its new Apple File System (APFS). It’s a file system that was originally announced at WWDC last year, and it’s designed with the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV in mind. [Read more here...]